You lucky sod!!!
Godd luck and watch out for the tin boxes.

Awesome. Best of luck on the journey and post plenty so we can follow along.

Ahoy! Day one is underway, and we have reached Eugene Oregon! We are staying at Tom’s Dad’s friend Tom’s house. That’s right, there are two Tom’s today. We left this morning from my parent’s house at 7:10. Tom was nice enough to wait on me. I was running late. Why? Because I stayed up until 3am packing, and taking care of business. Did we cover all the bases? Most likely. We’ll see how it goes! If you can fix it, don’t worry. If you can’t fix it. Don’t worry.
Taking off! We’re on our way! Tom is in Orange. I am Dark Green.

Onward! Time to get fuel. Haha. We were already low on fuel, and Tom had to pull over on the side of the highway in the first 10 miles. Why? His bike sputtered out and he couldn’t switch to reserve fast enough. Luckily, we’re both have a Sena SMH10 Bluetooth communication devices. They are good for nearly 1000 yards, and work great. They are also the most weatherproof that we could find. We got a complete dual pack for a great deal from Rocket Moto in the vendor section. Check them out! Tom simply let me know he was on the side of the highway. I pulled over, and he caught up, and we rolled along. Awesome.
First fuel stop,

Daaaaaaaaaaaaaamn it. The first 180 miles was nothing but rain. The headsets held up well, and are still in great shape. We’re wearing Rev’it Cayenne Pro Jacket’s and pants. They zip together, and are WATERPROOF. AWESOME. Tom’s wearing a pair of leather, waterproof work boots, and I have a pair of Alpinestar Web Goretex Boots. We’re getting along pretty well.
First pit stop, damn rain was so dense it was like driving through fog at times. Pretty gnarly.

Being able to talk to each other is great. We can make plans on the fly, stop for fuel at good any time. We’ll around 11:30 we were getting hungry, and we needed fuel. Vancouver, Washington was a good spot. We made it 180 miles before Tom ran to his reserve while on the fly, and we averaged 42mpg at 65-70mph the whole way, fully loaded. Not bad in our opinions.
Time for food,

Well, after food, we made plans to stop in Eugene for the day. 300 miles in total. It’s been good so far. We’ll Tom’s Dad’s friend Tom brew for a hobby. So we had some !
Time for Beer,

Meet Tom and Tom,

Tom’s gnarly ‘Stasche

Time for Food!

It’s been a good day one for us. We’re enjoying our time on the road despite the crappy weather; we’re having a great time! Chalk 1 up for day one! Awesome!
Tomorrow we’d like to ride about 5 hours. That would put us in Redding California. Can you hear that C THRU U? We’d love to take you up on that offer for a place to crash.
Onward!
--Alex

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NJ, NR, NBTTN

Terrific couple of opening posts!

Maybe you should find someone back home to act as agent, get you hooked up with a publisher, there must be possibilities there.

Btw, unless I missed it, you never introduced us to the little lad teaching you on the computer.......

Have a great journey.

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TTR250 - London to Cape Town

A great start, keep it coming!

Well, we’re back on the road again! Day 2 started out well, and we were on the road by 10am. Not as early as some people like to embark, but early enough for us. Our riding style is relaxed. And we stop whenever we feel like it. Everything is a fluid as possible. Room for reasonable reasoning as I like to call it. We rode from Eugene Oregon, to Phillipsville California. It was some good riding, and the sun was out nearly the entire day. We even broke out the summer weight riding gloves for part of the ride. Our goal was to ride the 101 for as long as we saw fit. Other people had their own agenda. Due to the rock slide over 101 just north of a town called Garberville, we came to a halt around 8:30pm. It was a good time to take a break anyway. We chatted it up with the road crew worker who was directing wayward travelers such as ourselves. He was paid double time on Sunday’s and was all sorts of happy about it.
Leaving Tom’s in Eugene

On the way there we stopped at the Bigfoot Cavern.

And had a couple of burgers.
We ride some awesome road through Hwy 101

We’ll Tom picked up a flat tire around the same time. We noticed it was running flat just as we pulled over for a break. The fixing of the flat tire took about 25 minutes (we’re still getting used to it) and it has held up over the past 300 miles just fine.

And right after we fixed his flat tire, we found a great place to camp (thanks to the sober guy at the bar that gave us directions, and thanks to our LED offroad lights, purchased from advmonster.com)

We slept for about 8 hours, and then it was time to break camp. No tents this time around, and it was about 40degrees that night. Not bad for just some sleeping pads and sleeping bags. It was a good time.

Day 3
We crossed the newly fixed landslide slide area, and rode the 101 all the way to San Fran. About 243 miles. Nothing to intense. We saw lots of big ass redwood trees, and no less than a few hundred curvy roads. The weather approached 75 degrees as we grew closer to San Francisco, and the layers started coming off.
We stopped at a few “vista points”

And took a picture of my bike,

Stopped at a Denny’s for some food, cause we didn’t eat breakfast

Rode some more awesome highway 101 tracks,

… And rode to meet, Brady “Bones” Flynn in San Fran at his apartment.

On the way there we crossed the Golden Gate Bridge.

Then we hung out with Brady. Meet Brady!

Tom and Brady went to Gonzaga University together. Brady’s apartment has a bitchin view.
Brady “Bones’” view

Then we went to some bars and had some food. I had a blue cheese burger and it was delicious.

Now, we’re hitting the sack. Sleeping on Brady’s couches and enjoying being off the ground. We had a good couple of days.
It turns out that Tom didn’t bring his bike registration or title with him, so we’re having his Parents mail it ahead to a Post Office in San Diego. Of course he needs these items to get into Mexico, and though I have mine with me, we failed to communicate the necessity before we left a few days ago.
The documents will be waiting for us this Wednesday afternoon. A minor ordeal, but an important one for sure.
I went to the REI today here in San Fran to buy some compression sacks, and a couple of stuff sacks for the trip. I ended up with a 15* bag to replace my ghetto 32 degree bag, and the before mentioned stuff save.

Today has been a good day! Tomorrow we plan to make it to Los Angeles. Hopefully we do’!
--Alex

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NJ, NR, NBTTN

Ahhh, we went to bed late last night. Tom straight up passed out. He looked like this when he went to bed

And some during the night he underwent a metamorphosis.

We woke up at about 9am this morning. No rush for anyone around. Yes, we planned to reached L.A. today, but so what. 432 miles down Highway 101… 8 hours. Easy.
I wanted to make sure I fit into my new sleeping bag fit. Did I mention? I’m 6’6”. I Fit!

And Tom had to catch up on the local entertainment and news.
(Victoria’s Secret)
We had to take a jaunt up the staircase to the Roof again. It’s a nice view.

Notice Brady’s computer engineer/programmer roommate, working from home on the deck. Aged 24 like the rest of us.

Get a parting photo.

Back down the stairs! Watch your head!

We left Tom’s friend Brady’s apartment in San Francisco this morning at around 10:45 and headed straight for the R.E.I. to exchange a waterproof stuff sack that I bought, for a bigger one. Tom bought 15 feet of bungee cord. For miscellaneous tie downs. We didn’t leave the R.E.I until Noon. Shit.
We proceeded to haul ass for 60-70 miles at a go. 65+Mph all the time. Until we realized that we hadn’t eaten much of anything since the night before.
Time for food. Tom had Beef Curry, I had a Beef Rice Bowl. We didn’t realize until we entered, but we chose to stop for food at a Japanese Grocery Mart. We were two of less than 10 Caucasian people of 400+ Japanese. It was like we stepped into Japan! The food was good too!

Alright, then we hauled some more ass. 77 miles this time around. We have a habit of just telling the other person (via the Bluetooth headsets) that we want to pull over. So we pull over anywhere ,

preferably at a place with grass, so we can just

After our last jaunt through the sunny valleys of the coastal California highway 101, we were getting pretty tired already. We slept poorly, and had already ridden 140 miles. Soon enough, it started to get colder as well. We left San Fran and it was 70*. Tom removed his waterproof and thermal pant and jacket liners. I removed my thermal ones. We were glad we had when the temps reached the low 80’s. But, of course with the cloudless sunshine comes the cold clear nights. Sooner than later the temps dropped back to 60 degrees, and with just our jacket armor on, we had to toss on some warmer clothing underneath.
Toms chose his long johns! I chose a micropuff down jacket.

We stopped more than once. Riding into headwinds, on single cylinder thumpers, at 65+ miles an hour, for hours at a time, is tireing to say the least. It sucks.

But! We arrived in Glendale (L.A.) three hours ago, and promptly met up Charlie, the Australian, riding a 2010 Yamaha Tenere 660. We’ve been in contact with him over the past week or so, and planned to meet up when we arrived here. No pictures of that yet, you’ll have to wait.
We’re tired as hell. 432 widing slow miles. About 9 hours of riding. The last 2 hours were in the pitch black. It was rough going the last 120 miles or so. But we’re safe and sound at a RodeWay Inn.

We’re heading to San Diego tomorrow, and will stay there tomorrow night with a friend from High School.. Thursday will mark entry into Mexican territory. It should be good!
More to come!

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NJ, NR, NBTTN